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On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

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Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#91

Post by chasd00 »

arethuza wrote: post #18
tomaytotomato wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Cuban missile crises I would say was a lot less precarious than Able Archer or the 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm alert - which was averted, by, ahem - an engineer! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alar...

There is an incredibly good minute-by-minute account of the Cuban crisis: "One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War" - it covers a lot of areas that aren't often mentioned such as the U2 flight at the North Pole going astray or the Soviet nuclear cruise missile teams targetting Guantanamo that taken together with the more well known events make it seem remarkable to me that w…

In first 20 minutes of the documentary The Fog of War Robert McNamara goes over the Cuban missile crisis in detail. Even he admits it came down to luck.

His meeting with Cuba in the 90s and the new information presented that McNamara didn’t have during the crisis was especially sobering. McNamara ended the meeting early because he was “unprepared” to learn there were missiles already operational and authorization was already granted to launch if the Cuban build sites were struck.

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#92

Post by SCdF »

dash2 wrote: post #24

I predict that in 25 years (or 50 or 100): - human society will be even richer, more prosperous and more technologically advanced - people will still be desperately worrying that this is a time of crisis and collapse Let's see.

How does the climate crisis fold into that, or do you not think that's a problem, or do you think it's a problem with no ramifications?

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#93

Post by AnimalMuppet »

antman wrote: post #82
GardenLetter27 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the issue is not propaganda at all, but real physical problems that are not being addressed. Western governments have been mostly incapable of building housing and infrastructure. We have a severe housing shortage, barely improved public transport since the 80s, a lack of energy production (in Europe), lack of reservoirs, an aging population and increased international competition, etc. And this all creates a hug…

I will agree but rephrase, they were not incapable limiting supply of housing or chinese imports or international information channels is the model. Artificial barriers, ethical redefinitions, rag pulling, tollboothing have been the way to divide and conquer to channel the decaying international and domestic market share to political affiliates. Most political , maga, lgbt, policing, race etc issues are highlighted a…

> When I hear for the other side the media to claim “they went crazy”, “they are barbarian subhumans” I know I am being manipulated.

You need to learn to recognize that when it comes from your side of the media, too.

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#94

Post by bell-cot »

jhbadger wrote: post #88
bell-cot wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Millennia before Adam Smith was born, pretty much every human societies which built "houses" (be they crude tents, igloos, lean-tos, thatched huts, or whatever) made a point of building enough of those to house all their members. Capitalism has financialized housing, and that seems to be a major cause of the "can't actually build housing" problem.

In general, in pre-industrial societies families built their own houses rather than "society" building them for them. Of course this was because 1) many tribal societies had no concept of land ownership so you could just build wherever someone else wasn't using, and often these were temporary for a season or two anyway 2) later feudal societies where there was land ownership had land mostly owned by a nobleman who al…

Maybe true "In general"? But a very good fit for my poorly-chosen set of examples. Vs. -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longhouse

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pueblo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabono

(And quite a few others.)

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#95

Post by ipsento606 »

grunder_advice wrote: post #28
GardenLetter27 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the issue is not propaganda at all, but real physical problems that are not being addressed. Western governments have been mostly incapable of building housing and infrastructure. We have a severe housing shortage, barely improved public transport since the 80s, a lack of energy production (in Europe), lack of reservoirs, an aging population and increased international competition, etc. And this all creates a hug…

Propaganda always builds on real greviences that the electorate has. It's good that you bring up housing. There are, to my knowledge no political parties that have made housing their top agenda item. They only use housing as a talking point to serve their message. For example the extreme right will just say, immigrants are occupying all the housing supply. The extreme left will say it's just capitalism that is to bla…

The problem with the housing issue is that real solutions to it are extremely unpopular, even amount people who agree with the scale and intensity of the problem.

The regular voting public doesn't even agree that there's a connection between increasing the supply of housing and housing becoming more affordable.

Their position is, roughly, "there's plenty of housing already - it just needs to be more affordable for regular people". Sometimes this even manifests in support for self-defeating demand subsidies like help-to-buy schemes for new homeowners

This is a position that can never be satisfied because it is fundamentally disconnected from reality. It is equivalent to the meme of the dog with the stick in its mouth who wants you to throw the stick for them, but not take the stick from them.

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#96

Post by xtiansimon »

SCdF wrote: post #90
grunder_advice wrote: post #9

Pretty much all western countries are experiencing a crisis of democracy. It seems to me that the biggest contributor to this is the vulnerability of the electorate. It seems to me that it has become possible to hijack the minds of individuals with sustained propaganda campaigns. You have individuals who at best completely a BSc in Business Studies, and you are asking them to decide on COVID or climate change. That b…

> and you are asking them to decide on COVID or climate change In case you didn't mean this, do you agree that the propaganda you're referencing above is the "you" in this sentence? eg the propaganda is the thing that is asking them to decide on covid or climate change. I don't think anyone who is genuine expects the public to have expertise in these topics. The propaganda seems centred around a constant war against…

> “…do you agree that the propaganda you're referencing above is the "you" in this sentence?”

?? The op is making “propaganda” by some assertions in their comment?

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#97

Post by laffOr »

cycomanic wrote: post #70
GardenLetter27 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the issue is not propaganda at all, but real physical problems that are not being addressed. Western governments have been mostly incapable of building housing and infrastructure. We have a severe housing shortage, barely improved public transport since the 80s, a lack of energy production (in Europe), lack of reservoirs, an aging population and increased international competition, etc. And this all creates a hug…

This is one thing that I don't understand, take for example Germany, the population barely grew over the last 20 years [1], at the same time there has been a building boom that building costs have risen dramatically (more than doubled between 2010 and 2024). Compare that to the 60s and 70s where population was rising much faster in combination with the rebuilding effort. So is the growth of housing stock lower than t…

Not German so I can only talk about how it is going in another country:

- Massive change in the average household size: way fewer people live together now (delayed couple & family formation, divorce, etc.). If you go from 4 people per household to 2 people per household, now you need twice as many homes.

- Massive internal migration: declining population in a lot of rural areas and increasing in cities & their suburbs. So lot of empty houses and super cheap houses in Dumbfuck, Nowhere but scarce & expensive homes where people want to live.

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#98

Post by dv_dt »

cycomanic wrote: post #70
GardenLetter27 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the issue is not propaganda at all, but real physical problems that are not being addressed. Western governments have been mostly incapable of building housing and infrastructure. We have a severe housing shortage, barely improved public transport since the 80s, a lack of energy production (in Europe), lack of reservoirs, an aging population and increased international competition, etc. And this all creates a hug…

This is one thing that I don't understand, take for example Germany, the population barely grew over the last 20 years [1], at the same time there has been a building boom that building costs have risen dramatically (more than doubled between 2010 and 2024). Compare that to the 60s and 70s where population was rising much faster in combination with the rebuilding effort. So is the growth of housing stock lower than t…

IMHO the key problems is new building is not targeted to the affordable market and easier to build areas with access to jobs of good economic income are not really open any longer. The established land markets are more expensive because literal "green field" expansion of new cities is not very common, and no longer available in quantity. The cost to build are further increased because the higher end market demands more amenities and developers almost always target the highest market available.

Note: I have a personal theory that one way China was able to perform at this it's current stage of growth, was because it was expanding a lot of first generation real estate development to new areas. It will be very interesting to see if they are able to maintain low housing costs going forward into the next couple decades.

There are dubious claims that the lower end market will be served by aged-out high end market housing and that's simply not the case. It ignores that housing stock ages out of usability - and remodeling is often more expensive to work on than the initial builds. Once you remodel them, they occupied at the high end, then they never free up or go down in rent for other portions of the market.

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#99

Post by ben_w »

cycomanic wrote: post #70
GardenLetter27 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the issue is not propaganda at all, but real physical problems that are not being addressed. Western governments have been mostly incapable of building housing and infrastructure. We have a severe housing shortage, barely improved public transport since the 80s, a lack of energy production (in Europe), lack of reservoirs, an aging population and increased international competition, etc. And this all creates a hug…

This is one thing that I don't understand, take for example Germany, the population barely grew over the last 20 years [1], at the same time there has been a building boom that building costs have risen dramatically (more than doubled between 2010 and 2024). Compare that to the 60s and 70s where population was rising much faster in combination with the rebuilding effort. So is the growth of housing stock lower than t…

> So is the growth of housing stock lower than the population growth?

National averages can hide a lot of local issues. I'm in Berlin right now, I'm told by locals that it's lost the reputation it used to have for "cheap" housing. (It's not cheap, but I'll have to take their word for it that it ever was, I've not found historical purchase prices vs. income graphs like I've seen in the UK).

Meanwhile, if you're willing to look at 115 year old places in the arse end of nowhere: https://www.immobilienscout24.de/expose/165084645?referrer=H... or https://www.immobilienscout24.de/expose/164269182?referrer=H...

New places are more expensive for various reasons. The land in Berlin can easily be as expensive as the cost of building a home on that land, because fixed supply and a lot of demand. Even if the land was free, the cheapest new build cost I've seen is more than twice the price of the more expensive of those two, but will almost certainly also make up for the full price difference (including land at Berlin prices) just in reduced energy bills before the mortgage is paid off.

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#100

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

cycomanic wrote: post #70
GardenLetter27 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the issue is not propaganda at all, but real physical problems that are not being addressed. Western governments have been mostly incapable of building housing and infrastructure. We have a severe housing shortage, barely improved public transport since the 80s, a lack of energy production (in Europe), lack of reservoirs, an aging population and increased international competition, etc. And this all creates a hug…

This is one thing that I don't understand, take for example Germany, the population barely grew over the last 20 years [1], at the same time there has been a building boom that building costs have risen dramatically (more than doubled between 2010 and 2024). Compare that to the 60s and 70s where population was rising much faster in combination with the rebuilding effort. So is the growth of housing stock lower than t…

I suspect part of it is that the housing being built now is both bigger and better than that built in the 60s and 70s. Think of what cars were like then versus now. The other might be the availability of land. Another factor is how housing has changed from being more of a commodity item back then (its a place to live) to an investment vehicle (its a thing you own and make return from). These trends are not specific to Germany, but would apply to many developed countries worldwide.
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